CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (33 page)

             
With the care of a man in pain, he stuck it in his mouth. The expression on his face wavered between agony and relief. "That's good. That's better." He sat perfectly upright at the table, his cracked ribs wrapped to relieve the torture of breathing. "Who taught you that?"

             
"My mom." Kate paced between the freezer with its multiple, reusable ice bags, the blender with its milk shakes and smoothies, and the sink where she peeled fruit. The acid stung the cuts in her hands—a nurse at the hospital had cleaned the rust out of Kate's palms while Kate waited for Teague to get X-rayed and stitched.

             
"And how did your mom know?"

             
"Because she's a mom." What an insensitive thing to say. Savagely Kate stuck the waste down the disposal. He'd had a mom, too, only his mom hadn't cared enough to give him Popsicles when he hurt himself. So Kate supposed she was sorry. She certainly knew she should be.

             
But he'd lied to her about his background. He'd lied, and now she doubted his truths. "Dad and I used to play catch, and in the beginning I usually caught with my face. I got better."

             
"I can see that. Your face looks great." Teague tried to smile, tried to be conciliatory. Blood oozed from his battered lips.

             
Yeah, well, the soles of Kate's feet were raw from running on concrete, gravel, and garbage, and her left big toe had a slice deep enough to require hydrogen peroxide, a butterfly bandage, and a tetanus shot.

             
Her aches did not improve her mood. "Don't smile," she told him callously. "Smiling doesn't make
you
look better."

             
"What's wrong?" He put down his Popsicle. He caught her hand, kissed the scraped skin. "You're upset."

             
"Who wouldn't be upset when her boyfriend gets beaten up?" She freed her hand. "Your eye looks like hell." It did. He had stitches just below his eyebrow, and the doctor said he'd been lucky the socket hadn't been broken. "Let me get you another ice bag."

             
"I can do it." He stood, but he didn't get in her way. "You're upset with
me
."

             
She hesitated. But what difference did it make? She didn't want him touching her. She might as well tell him. "I'm not
upset
with you. I'm
mad
at you."

             
He knew she was mad. She could see by the expression on his face. Well. The man would have to be stupid not to know he'd screwed up, and Teague Ramos was anything but stupid.

             
She mashed the blue ice bag until the insides were pliable, wrapped it in a dish towel, and handed it to him.

             
"Look, I'm sorry about your shoes," he said. "I'll buy you some new ones.

             
She was wrong. He was stupid. "I paid four hundred dollars for them in New York."

             
Before he had looked battered. Now he looked ill. "I've never understood how women can justify paying that much for a silly pair of—"

             
She had to stop him before she made his other eye swell. "What? I can't quite hear you. You're muttering."

             
"I
said
I'm sorry I spouted off about your career." Sinking down in the chair again, he carefully applied the ice to his eye. "I don't know where that came from. Out of the fifties, I guess. I didn't really mean it."

             
"Yes, you did. I don't know any man who wouldn't prefer to be the center of the universe. You're used to being the hottest stuff around. When you tell people about your job, you're the center of attention, and you don't like it when I am." She could see he hated hearing the truth. Good. "But I can deal with that. The trouble is, your complaining about my ambition is the tip of the iceberg. When we were walking to Starbucks, why didn't you tell me you suspected those guys were thugs?"

             
He lowered the ice bag to look at her with his one good eye and the almost-swollen-shut bad eye. "Because I thought they might be working on instructions to kidnap you."

             
Kidnap
. The word sent chills down her spine.

             
Her father had been kidnapped. He'd been tortured. He'd been murdered. She didn't want to end up like that.

             
But that wasn't the point here, and she wouldn't let Teague distract her. "So you ordered me inside the capitol, no explanation, when if you'd said, 'Kate, those are bad guys, go away,' I would have run."

             
"No, you wouldn't have." He snorted in disbelief. "I know you. You would have done just what you did and jumped into the middle of a fight."

             
"If you were going to insist on facing them, then yes, I would have hung around with my high heels until the cavalry came."

             
"You're not trained to fight."

             
"I'd say I did a pretty good job. In fact"—she surveyed him critically—"I look a lot better than you."

             
He reared back in the chair and snapped, "They overwhelmed me."

             
She could see she'd wounded his macho vanity, and that gave her a great deal of pleasure. "You needed help, and you got it—from me." However, it was obvious she could wait until hell froze over before he thanked her. "If you had told me the truth, at least I would have known what was going on. I would have been prepared instead of caught by surprise. I wouldn't have felt like"—oh, no, her voice wavered—"like some worthless bimbo on your arm." Like every other useless woman he'd ever dated. Like one of the crowd.

             
"There are worse things to be." He put the bag back on his eye, as if the discussion was closed.

             
"Than a bimbo?" Outrage lifted Kate out of her momentary weepiness. "No, there aren't!"

             
"You could be dead!"

             
"They weren't going to kill me. They were going to kill
you
." She stuck her finger in his face. "You
yelled
at me for not letting them kill you."

             
"I'm supposed to be protecting you."

             
He seemed to suffer from male-onset deafness, so she repeated herself. "You yelled at me for not letting them kill you."

             
He
repeated
himself "I'm supposed to be protecting you."

             
Apparently she was mistaken. It wasn't male-onset deafness. It was male-onset idiocy. "This is too much. I've learned my lesson. I let love sweep me off my feet and out of any good sense I ever learned, but today showed me my mistake. First I get yelled at by Brad for not doing my job. Then I have to talk to that creep Oberlin three times." She showed Teague three fingers. "Then you shout at me because I didn't run away screaming like one of those dim-bulb girls you usually sleep with. Fine. I'm going to do what I do best. I'm going to find the story on Oberlin, expose him for one murder and God knows how many more, and then get my life back to normal."

             
"Normal? Get your life back to normal?" With controlled force, he threw the ice bag into the sink. "Do you know how stupid that sounds? Your life won't be back to normal! You'll be dead like Evelyn Oberlin. Like Lana Whoever it was he killed. Like the other people he possibly took out. We haven't said it yet, but do you realize we're talking about a serial killer? One with money and power and who kills without remorse?"

             
"A serial killer who appears to be after
you
." That shut him up—for about five seconds.

             
"I'm not the target. He wants me out of the way so he can get to you."

             
"My incredibly brilliant analytical mind already figured that out. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether you're the real target, you'll be just as dead." Today Oberlin had made her skin crawl. The way he'd looked at her, the way he'd made excuses to touch her . . . she hadn't told Teague, but Oberlin had said things. Things that sounded innocuous, but weren't.

             
Kate, from the first minute I saw you, I knew you were the one woman who could help me through my wife's death.

             
But Senator, when we first met, your wife wasn't dead.

             
He laughed genially. Oh, Kate, you're smart—and pretty, too. I have to take care of you. After all, you're my own special reporter.

             
She couldn't tell Teague that stuff. He'd go ballistic, try to put her in an ivory tower and rush himself into harm's way to get to Oberlin. She was flattered that Teague thought enough of her to be so concerned—actually, more than flattered, she was plunging more deeply in love than ever—but she couldn't let him protect her at the expense of his own life.

             
She'd already lost her father to torment and death. She couldn't lose Teague, too. She couldn't bear that.

             
"I'm a damned good reporter," she said, "and I'm going to do what I do best. I'll do my research, get my facts—"

             
"I've got a man doing that. Rolf's been researching him on the Internet, and Oberlin's clean as a whistle."

             
"That's impossible. There's no way a senator couldn't have people who hate him." The red fog of rage and fear cleared a little, and her brain started clicking through the facts. "The Democrats, the Republicans, the conservatives, the liberals—somebody hates him."

             
"Apparently no one is allowed to express an adverse public opinion."

             
She whistled in amazement. "That's fascinating. I'll have to go to the source."               "What are you talking about?" He enunciated each word.

             
"I'll have to go to Hobart." Mentally, she was rubbing her hands together. She was going to search out some hidden thing that desperately needed to be revealed.
This
was a story.

             
"No." Teague shook his head as if he knew the right thing to do. "No, you do not have to go to Hobart."

             
"Don't be silly. That's where Oberlin's from. That's where Mrs. Oberlin was from. They have to have family there."

             
"Unless he killed them all."

             
"Don't exaggerate. My God, you act as if I would rush in, announce I'm investigating Senator Oberlin and his previous murders, and allow his local goons to take me out." She tried to control her exasperation, tried to talk sense to a man who had none. "Hobart is just a town, Teague, a little town of about five thousand with four stoplights and the county rodeo grounds outside the city limits."

             
"You've already investigated the place," he said, obviously aghast. "When did you do that?"

             
"As soon as I realized Senator Oberlin was after me. I called the city council for the stats."

             
"No." Teague slapped his palm on the table. "You're not going."

             
"No? Are you telling me
no
?" Kate itched to slap her palm, too—against his bruised, superior, smart-aleck face. "You're not my boss. You're not my husband. You're just my lover, and you've proved very conclusively today that there are big differences in how we view our relationship."

             
"There are big differences in how we view the
world
. You had money that protected you. You had parents who sheltered you. You're a privileged woman. You think that good triumphs and evil is punished, but that's absolute bullshit. I've been all over with the Marines, and evil triumphs all the time."

             
"Is that who you think I am?" How could he have lived with her, talked to her, been with her, and still be so wrong? "Some fairy-tale princess who sees good in everyone? Some child to be protected from life?"

             
"With this plan to chase after Oberlin, you've proved that's who you are."

             
"And you've proved you don't know me at all." With his opinions and his words, he was stomping her into the ground, making her less than she knew herself to be. In a low voice, she said, "I've lived in countries where women are valued less than horses, where unwanted babies are exposed to the elements to die. I've seen children starve, their bellies swollen, their bones protruding; and we couldn't feed them fast enough to save them. I've seen women torn by gang rape and villages destroyed by war." The images paraded across her mind. "And yes, when I was a child my parents protected me, but they wanted me to know the world I lived in. They wanted me to be the kind of person who called other members of the human race my brothers and sisters. So when I was old enough, I saw it all. My dad and mom and I worked in refugee camps. We worked in hospitals. We
helped
."